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[Mjkoaktreecottag AT aol.com]

RE: The info regarding flax processing~ It has been garnered over the  past 
35  years from research (mainly reading textile books and talking to  museum 
staff at various sites) as well as my "spinster" friends and mentor so  most 
of 
it is not from reference books.   I did this because I was  once in charge of 
a participatory educational program for school children as  well as an 
assistant curator for a museum village and wanted what I told the  kids or 
wrote for 
the teachers to be as complete and accurate as I could  ascertain it to be; 
besides I still spin sometimes and am an erstwhile  weaver.  However, I'm 
happy 
to say that I have turned the flax processing  demonstrations to my husband.  
That process was usually done by the men and  boys, instead of the "distaff" 
side of the family, because it belongs in the  farmyard or barn because of 
the 
mess it makes.  However, as with many jobs  considered to be "men's work ", 
if 
they were not around for some  reason, then, as today, many women stepped 
into the breach...
maggie
Incidentally, Ginny Partridge, textile specialist at The Farmers' Museum  
(Cooperstown, NY) said "heckling"
was used more often in upstate NY (she thought it was a New  England term 
that came there with the first settlers from NE) than  "hatcheling" or 
"hetcheling."  Interesting how the meaning changed   and spread.
 
For more on daily life in the northern US in the 19th C., I recommend Jared  
Van Wagenen's Golden Age of Homespun, and for a glimpse of the  18th C. in 
the 
area of NY state where I was raised, Hector St. John de  Crevecouer's Diary 
of an American Farmer.  There's another  interesting little book for the 
early 
19th C., this one for then  rural northern VA ( I live now in nearby WV), the 
 
of John Janney, a Quaker  lad, but I'll have to look up the correct title. 
It's a recollection rather than  a diary, because it was written in his later 
years. There are others out there  too, but one has to dig a little to find 
them.  Wish that there were more  that were published.  Like MS cookbooks, 
there 
are probably diaries and  other manuscripts dealing with earlier times
in the hands of families, or even unbeknown to them hidden away in  attics... 



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